Just days after another dust storm in the same region, a fresh storm broke out over Iraq on April 4, 2011. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite took this picture the same day.

Source points for the dust are not obvious in this image, but the storm may have arisen at least partly in Syria and Turkey before blowing southward. Once started, the storm likely picked up additional material from fine river- and lakebed sediments in Iraq, and may have even stirred material in the sand seas of northern Saudi Arabia. The Arabian Peninsula ranks among the world’s most prolific dust-producing regions.